N Ravi Shanker

The Government of India approved the setting up of the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) in 2011, with the aim of providing broadband connectivity with adequate bandwidth to 2,50,000 gram panchayats in India. N Ravi Shanker is currently Chairman and MD, Bharat Broadband Network Ltd (BBNL), which is the special purpose vehicle (SPV) established by the Government of India for establishment, management and operation of NOFN. In this interaction with IBEF, he discusses the progress being made by BBNL in the NOFN project, and the impact it is expected to have on development in the coming years.

Roadmap for NOFN rollout

The progress so far is that we have seen that applications have benefitted people (across three pilot projects). As and when the rollout of the main project occurs, that will be a pull factor for more applications and content Read More >>

N Ravi Shanker: The Government had initially projected that it wanted the project to be completed in a span of two years. We started three pilot projects in three locations – Arian block in Ajmer district, Rajasthan; Paravada block in Vishakhapatnam district, Andhra Pradesh and similarly the Panisagar block in North Tripura district of Tripura state. All three pilot projects were completed by October 2012. Subsequently, what we came to note was that the telecom sector was not very enthused about it. This was when the Department of Telecom and the Department of IT in the Government of India got together and we felt that we need to do something more. And the Government usage would be propelled through investment by the Department of IT. The Department of IT pitched in with counterpart funding if I may say so, and they have added to the kitty in the three pilot locations. A hundred and ten institutions have been enabled with IT equipment and telecom connectivity of 10 Mbps per institution. These are all government institutions including schools, hospitals, panchayat offices and government offices. The last quarter of calendar year 2013 is a critical period, by the end of which I would expect that most of the tenders would be in the stage of acceptance of finalisation. Subsequently, in the last quarter of the financial year, we have tried to phase out this whole programme. If we can take up 1 lakh gram panchayats across several states in the first phase, we should be able to get the work started, and I think that work can be completed in the first six months of calendar year 2014. Our expectation is that the second phase of 1 lakh gram panchayats can be rolled out by March-April, 2015, and the balance 50,000 gram panchayats could be covered by September-October 2015. I would like to look at it that by another two years, the pace of work could be staggered in such a manner that we will be in a position to roll it out across the country. Read Less >>

Expected impact on India's GDP

If around Rs 20,000 crore to Rs 30,000 crore is put in the NOFN, there would be corresponding investments of around Rs 1,50,000 crore, which would span across telecom, IT, media and entertainment sectors, which will actually play a huge part in the economic growth. Read More >>

N Ravi Shanker: World Bank studies indicate that 10 per cent increase in penetration of broadband leads to around 1.38 per cent increase in GDP. I don’t want to hazard a guess as to how it will impact in the Indian scenario. It will have variations across regions and countries. But I can see 2-3 things happening. Let’s look at the digital scenario in our country. Quite a lot of things are happening. Firstly, the information and broadcasting sector is on a digitalisation path. That digitalisation path indicates that by 2015-16, several parts of the country will be on the digitalised platform. We do have around a 100 million cable TV homes. So I can see that these 100 million cable TV homes will be on the digital bandwagon, if I can use that term. If they are on the digital bandwagon, why can’t we work together to see the various sectors – the telecom sector, the IT sector, the media sector and the entertainment sector – all converge, and the NOFN can be the carrier on which all the content can travel to consumers across all geographies. This is the way I would like to look at it. We need to have devices. So, it impacts the electronics sector. You will have several hundred millions of people coming on to the digital bandwagon – as first time users, as repeat users, as upgraders and the like. So you will have a whole host of electronic devices that are coming up, which will try to lure the customers and you will have a growth path for the electronic industry. The third sector I would like to look at is the telecom sector. The voice sector has seen high competition and today, we as a nation of consumers have got the benefit of the best tariff anywhere in the world. I would like this to be repeated in the data sector also. The National Telecom Policy envisages increasing broadband connections from 16 million to 600 million by 2020. It is achievable, provided we have a blend of factors, which I would like to call as the 5Cs. Connectivity is the first, which will be achieved through the NOFN and the telecom towers (2G, 3G and several of the 4G towers that are coming up). Content is the second, which has to be relevant and in local language. Cost of devices is the third, as devices have to be very affordable. I feel that cell phones costing less than Rs 5000 are the order of the day. The market is big for absorption for players who get a phone at that price range. Competitive tariff is the fourth factor. Consumer is king, and we have to all recognise it. So if you have competitive tariff like the voice sector, the data sector is bound to boom. The last, but not the least, is computer literacy. I would like to believe that the digital sector provides people with an opportunity to levitate out of what was classically defined as illiteracy – with the literacy paradigm being one who could read or write. But one who can use devices can get along with life. I think we should consider them as literate – computer literate. It’s not necessary that you need to read or write to be categorised as literate. Writing is just a few centuries old. But we are an oral society and oral traditions have been in place. All types of search engines should come about in a manner wherein language could become the medium of expression. Voice recognition could be the way in which to move ahead. I think that would provide a real challenge for the IT sector and for all the scientists and engineers who are working to see that the digital divide is bridged. Read Less >>

Opportunities for inclusive development

Higher bandwidth (through NOFN) will ensure streaming of video lessons, streaming of entertainment, tele-medicine solutions so that you can have patient to hospital interactions from the rural areas through the referral centres, etc

N Ravi Shanker: Let's look at it this way. What does the optical fibre enable? The enablement can be in the form of four pillars of growth – e-learning, tele-medicine, e-governance and e-commerce. That in its entirety captures all that ought to be there. We can have variations like e-banking, e-finance, etc. that will fall under one or the other of these four heads. If we look at it this way, the optical fibre reaching the gram panchayat will ensure that 100 Mbps of bandwidth is available. Today, the bandwidth in the gram panchayats and rural areas is at best around 512 Kbps. In some cases it can be 2 Mbps, where the common service centres of the National E-governance Programme are in place. When this NOFN project gets rolled out, we would be having higher bandwidth available. That will ensure streaming of video lessons, streaming of entertainment, tele-medicine solutions so that you can have patient to hospital interactions from the rural areas through the referral centres, etc. I think it offers a whole host of opportunities. So I look at this as infrastructure, which can create opportunities. The optical fibre network will have a terminal in the gram panchayat. I would call that as the pre-last mile. The last mile inevitably will be through wireless. So there ought to be a symbiotic relationship between the terminal of the NOFN project and the towers put up by all the telecom companies. There are around 4 lakh plus telecom towers in the country and at least over 2.5 lakh towers in the rural areas. So we have to see how the tower-terminal symbiosis occurs in such a manner, so that the telecom companies are able to leverage this backhaul infrastructure of the optical fibre cable to provide the fronthaul services to the rural areas. So we are creating a whole host of infrastructure symbiosis and that will enable more services. It's not just services, but at the end of the day we ought to look at the content that would be delivered across these carrier channels.

The idea behind NOFN is that incremental optical fibre be laid from where optical fibre exists to where it ought to reach – the gram panchayat Read More >>

N Ravi Shanker: In India, we are looking at two broad areas of activities in the telecom sphere. One is the voice segment, and the other is the data segment. In the voice segment, we are aware of the fact that we have close to 900 million subscribers of mobile phone SIM cards. This tells us that the tele-density in the country is at around 78 per cent overall. The rural tele-density is around 42 per cent and the urban tele-density is a little over 128 per cent. That gives us an indication that it is not very skewed and a large percentage of the rural population is also utilising mobile services. And if you look at telecom infrastructure – the mobile towers across the country – nearly 85-90 per cent of the geographical area of the villages has coverage of mobile phone. About 10 per cent of the villages are not yet covered. And it is our emphasis is to see that we have 100 per cent coverage to achieve what we call total coverage of the country through telecom mobile services. <p rgb(0,="" 0,="" 0);="" font-family:="" arial,="" helvetica,="" sans-serif;"=""> Now let's shift track to the data sector. Internet users in our country are around 120 million – in a country of 1.2 billion. If you look at broadband connections, they are just around 15 million. So that is a cause for concern, because if we really want to go on the digital growth paradigm, we need to have a situation where broadband penetration can increase. Optical fibre is the medium of telecom carrier communication. In a way, it has replaced old copper wires. While we are looking at the optical fibre communication situation (the infrastructure in place), we understand that sometime in 2010, the recommendations of TRAI were that we need to have a network – a National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) of sorts to take broadband to the rural areas – preferably to all the 2,50,000 gram panchayats and enable broadband penetration in this country. This sort of situation enabled several players – the government and the telecom stakeholders – to enter into a dialogue and to see how to put that into action. The recommendation of TRAI that the USOF funded was taken in its entirety and further course of action led to see that the NOFN project was approved by the Union Cabinet in October, 2011. The idea was that incremental optical fibre be laid from where optical fibre exists to where it ought to reach – the gram panchayat. So the three public sector undertakings – BSNL (being the behemoth of the sector) plus RailTel and Power Grid – were identified as the three entities that had backhaul fibre, which could be utilised to have the incremental optical fibre. The idea also was that the incremental optical fibre that ought to be laid by the funding from USOF should be in a manner so that it provides non-discriminatory access to all categories of service providers. So essentially it was an infrastructure provided by the government to enable the telecom sector to go on the next growth path, meaning the data segment. It was felt that this could be best achieved through the mechanics of a special purpose vehicle to be set up for this purpose, and Bharat Broadband Network Ltd was set up in February, 2012, to take this message across and to access the funds of the Universal Service Obligation Fund, so that they could work alongside other government agencies to put the infrastructure in place and then create the enabling conditions for the proliferation of broadband. Read Less >>

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